Zoo City
Zoo City (2010) is a Stand Alone book by Lauren Beukes Genres and Sub-Genres UF / edge of Horror Publishing Information * Publisher: Angry Robot April 29th 2010 * Book Page: Zoo City - Lauren Beukes - robottradingcompany.com * Book Page: Zoo City / Lauren Beukes :: Angry Robot Books * Bk: Paperback, 416 pages, Pub: April 29th 2010—ISBN13: 9780007327683 Book Description or Overview Alex has a talent for finding lost things. To save herself, she's got to find the hardest thing of all: The truth. ~ Zoo City by Lauren Beukes ~ FF Zoo City is set in an alternate version of the South African city of Johannesburg, in which people who have committed a crime are magically attached to an animal familiar – those who receive such punishment are said to be "animalled". The novel's chief protagonist, Zinzi December, is a former journalist and recovering drug addict who was "animalled" to a sloth after getting her brother killed. Zinzi is attempting to repay the financial debt she owes her drug dealer by charging people for her special skill of finding lost objects, as well as making use of her writing abilities by drafting 419 fraud emails. The book's plot focuses on Zinzi's attempts to find the missing female member of a brother-and-sister pop duo for a music producer, in return for the money she needs to fully repay her dealer. ~ Zoo City - Wikipedia World Building Setting Set in an alternate Johannesburg, South Africa Supernatural Elements Animal posession, healer (shaman), World This is a world in which people who commit murder immediately become permanent hosts to living animals. Imagine that the scarlet letter on Hester Prynne's chest is a furry mammal—or perhaps a spider, a bird, or a reptile. Animalled people must keep their animals physically close, or they will suffer terrible pain. If an animal dies, a shadowy, roaring mass called the Undertow drops down from above to engulf and obliterate its host. The animals serve as a constant reminder of the crime that brought them into their hosts' lives. Along with the animal comes a psychic talent—a shavi—different for each person. In this book, the plague of animal possession—called Aposymbiotism—dates back to the 1980s in a not-so-subtle reference to the beginning of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. This idea of animal possession is a part of several real-world mythologies. According to Zimbabwean tradition, the mashavi (singular, shavi) are spirits believed to possess people and to impart skills and talents to their human hosts. In Christianity, the idea of spirit animals can be linked to the biblical scapegoat of Leviticus 16 and to the burden of sin carried by the protagonist in Pilgrim's Progress. Chapter 19 of Zoo City presents a detailed explanation of what mashavi means in this story, so you may want to read that chapter before reading the story to get a full understanding. In the world of Zoo City, an animal arrives seemingly from nowhere immediately after the commission of each person's murderous crime, changing its host's life forever. As Zinzi says, "the problem with being mashavi is that it's not so much a job as a vocation. You don't get to choose the ghosts that attach themselves to you. Or the things they bring with them." (p. 18) As you can well imagine, Aposymbiots (aka animalled people) are marginalized—forced to live in ghettos like Zoo City, where they create their own lively sub-culture. When "normal" people see an animalled person, they have the same reaction that a Nazi in Hitler's Germany would have had when he or she encountered a person wearing a yellow star of David on a coat or jacket. Here, one character fumes after a security guard pulls him out of his car and grills him at length, "Animalists everywhere....They'd bring back the quarantine camps if they could." Zinzi responds: "What do you call Zoo City?" (p. 107) Muti (aka magic) is an important part of the story. The magical concept of mashavi is key to the story's conflict as well as being the single most important element in the lives of the animalled people of Zoo City. Most of the people of this alternate Johannesburg believe in magic and regularly make use of herbs, charms, and spells to make their lives easier and safer. In one dramatic scene, Zinzi, the heroine, visits a sangoma (a healer) who feeds her a potion that gives her hallucinatory flashbacks to terrible past incidents in her life as well as frightening visions of the future. Book Cover Description Zinzi has a Sloth on her back, a dirty 419 scam habit and a talent for finding lost things. But when a little old lady turns up dead and the cops confiscate her last paycheck, she’s forced to take on her least favourite kind of job – missing persons. Being hired by reclusive music producer Odi Huron to find a teenybop pop star should be her ticket out of Zoo City, the festering slum where the criminal underclass and their animal companions live in the shadow of hell’s undertow. Instead, it catapults Zinzi deeper into the maw of a city twisted by crime and magic, where she’ll be forced to confront the dark secrets of former lives – including her own. ~ Lauren Beukes (author) and Goodreads Awards * Winner of the Arthur C. Clarke Award * Shortlisted for the British Science Fiction Award for Best Novel * Winner of the Red Tentacle Award for Best Novel ~ Zoo City / Lauren Beukes :: Angry Robot Books